Sorry California, Colorado, and Arizona, but we no longer like you. For too long, you have taken our young college grads, our sun-seeking retirees, our capital, our income and our jobs.
It's time for this slow bleed to stop.
Thankfully, Milwaukee is not alone in this struggle.
In fact, we have friends throughout the Midwest. Our allies include community activists in Buffalo, N.Y., young entrepreneurs in Cleveland, Ohio, and subversive new-media types in St. Louis. They are genuinely concerned, extremely talented and eager to help.
The individuals mentioned are all part of GLUE -- the Great Lakes Urban Exchange. I just returned from a weekend spent with 50 GLUE members in Buffalo. The 20- and 30-somethings in attendance represented every large Great Lakes city -- 21 in all. They were small business owners, non-profit leaders, artists, grassroots community organizers and corporate professionals. They were black, white, Hispanic, Native and Asian. They were from both lily-white privileged suburbs and the toughest inner-city neighborhoods. It was a volatile mix, but it worked.
The overwhelming feeling at the start of the conference was one of isolation. "It's Milwaukee against the world." "It's Detroit against the world."
We quickly came to realize that this feeling of isolation was unjustified. After an extensive bus tour of Buffalo, which revealed the dramatic rise and tragic fall of that great city, none of us were shocked. Saddened, but not shocked. After all, each of our cities has been similarly hollowed from the inside out.
From that point forward, the focus of the weekend was on what we share, not on what we don't. Poverty, crime, segregation, crumbling streets and population loss is a reality for each of our Great Lakes counterparts.
What else do we share? Well, that's where it gets interesting.
Researchers and think tanks (like the one I work for) often tout the Great Lakes region's abundance of clean water, a high concentration of world-class research universities and our low cost of living.
No doubt, these are all big advantages.
But perhaps more important, from what I witnessed at this weekend's conference, is that the cities of the Great Lakes are bursting with cadres of young, hyper-motivated individuals, who are both discouraged with what they see in their respective cities and determined do something about it. That's the funny thing about "depressed cities" -- their tough problems give rise to some of the most engaged and creative citizenry in our country.
It's this group of Milwaukeeans that is, to me, most interesting. Absent the baby-boomer generation's limitations, some young folks in Milwaukee will capitalize on their cohorts' unique ability to cut across race and class divisions, to redefine our region's most intractable problems, and embrace creative solutions -- transforming the Midwest from a place of mere potential to a place of real economic, social and environmental health.
Some young Milwaukeeans, including a few OnMilwaukee.com readers, will respond to our region's challenges by simply throwing out a few rehashed complaints and saying "good riddance Milwaukee -- I'm leaving and not looking back."
Fair enough. Have fun in Denver.
But, from where I sat this weekend, I'm happy to report to you that there was very little complaining, just plenty of ideas and new methods to make those ideas become reality.
As Sam White, my former professor at UW-Milwaukee, likes to say, "It's the Midwest against the rest."
Indeed. And it's the Midwest's young guard that will lead that fight.
